This is one of the system pieces. If you’re new here, the more grounded pieces are usually a better place to begin.
“Attention is the creative act: it brings the world into being, and the world attends back.”
Iain McGilchrist
A charity shop is never as still as it seems. Even in quiet moments, something hums. Rails shift slightly under their own weight. Hangers knock in a soft rhythm as people pass outside. The till keeps a low electric murmur beneath everything. If you stand still long enough, the place feels less like a room and more like a system carrying its history forward.
Every day has a pulse. When that pulse is steady, the shop works with minimal effort. When it falters, the smallest shift, such as a snapped hanger or a misplaced comment, throws the atmosphere off balance. The room often reflects whatever attention it receives. That response is subtle but consistent.
If The Anatomy of Repair traced how coherence is maintained through action, then this piece explains why those actions matter. Every adjustment affects something else. Even the smallest correction alters what comes next. Nothing you do ends with you. It reshapes the system’s path.
In Kinetic Humanism, this reciprocity is the feedback of attention. It is the mechanism through which a system notices itself. Coherence relies on awareness. Attention is not observation. It changes the conditions it rests on. The moment you notice something, the day has already shifted.
Attention as Motion
Modern neuroscience treats attention as an active regulator rather than a selective beam. It does not simply track information. It modifies the state it observes.
Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart wrote in Trends in Cognitive Sciences (2000) that attention is the process through which self regulation becomes behaviour. Their work suggests that attention is not a guardian of order. It participates in creating it.
Kia Nobre and Mark Stokes argued in Attention and Time (2019) that attention shapes the structure of experience. It does not choose moments. It organises them. What they describe resembles what happens on the shop floor.
When a volunteer focuses on one corner, that part of the room shifts. Shelves straighten. Objects return to place. The rhythm changes. She is not only tidying. She is altering the conditions under which the rest of the day will unfold. The system follows the hands that work on it. Her attention becomes the coherence the room lacked.
This is how motion sustains itself. Attention produces adjustment. Adjustment restores alignment. Alignment changes the next moment. Without that loop, systems drift. Not through intention but through neglect. Entropy begins where attention stops.
The Everyday Loop
The pattern appears in practice long before it appears in theory.
My old manager preferred small interventions to large efforts. If the morning began with a simple sweep, volunteers arrived to a space already holding its shape. If the day began rushed, clutter spread faster than effort could contain it.
Straighten one rail and the others quietly follow. Ignore one and the shop feels slightly off by mid afternoon. Drift spreads with little resistance. Attention spreads too, often faster when someone gives it freely.
This is not limited to shops. Homes, streets, and workplaces behave in similar ways. They settle more easily when someone pays attention to them. When I say the day answers back, I mean that systems respond to the way they are perceived. It is a mechanical effect before it is a philosophical one.
Systems That Listen
The principle is not new, although its relevance keeps expanding.
Donella Meadows described feedback in Thinking in Systems (2008) as the core mechanism of stability. It allows a structure to adjust without losing its identity.
Grace W. Lindsay framed attention, in Models of the Mind (2021), as a noise filtering process that stabilises perception under constant input. Both perspectives describe systems that maintain themselves through disciplined noticing.
Kinetic Humanism extends this across scales. Any system that endures, from neural networks to neighbourhoods, depends on early correction. A structure remains coherent by sensing drift before collapse.
Examples appear everywhere. A forest supports its weaker patches through resource redistribution. A strained relationship steadies when someone acknowledges the imbalance. The shop, with its narrow aisles and volunteers working in rhythm, finds its shape again after a brief disruption. Early attention prevents larger failures.
The Drift of Distraction
The opposite of feedback is not quiet. It is noise.
Sherry Turkle warned in Reclaiming Conversation (2015) that a society saturated with digital signals risks losing the capacity for real attention. We have expanded stimulation while reducing perception. Every alert competes for circuits that once tracked meaning. Eventually, the signals blur. Routines continue, but awareness falls behind.
In Kinetic Humanism, this is attention debt. It is the widening gap between what we do and what we register ourselves doing. It accumulates quietly, the same way dust gathers at the edges of a room.
The Formula of Awareness
In The Anatomy of Repair, motion was defined as:
M = ΔC / Δt
Motion is coherence changing over time.
Attention does not appear in the equation, yet it governs its behaviour. When coherence begins to drift, attention is the first mechanism that registers the imbalance and draws the system back.
Without awareness, entropy expands. With awareness, motion stabilises. A system repairs itself through perception before it requires force.
Small gestures show this clearly. Someone clears the counter before clutter becomes a problem. A volunteer responds the moment the till hesitates. A minor action restores alignment. No rules. No announcement. Just feedback in motion.
Attention prevents motion from dissolving into noise. It is the basic intelligence through which a system keeps its direction.
The Human Scale
Consider a morning.
Wake scattered, and the world often mirrors it. Delays accumulate. Small irritations compound. Wake with care, and the same world holds its shape. Attention invites coherence.
The shop reflects this daily. One person’s steadiness often influences several others. Presence frees you to notice details you would otherwise step past. Systems do not require precision. They require perception. Noticing is enough to alter the outcome.
We occupy loops we help create. Personal, social, environmental. Attention is the dial that tunes their stability. When perception weakens, the system drifts. The feedback of attention is not theory. It is rails, radios, volunteers, customers, and the adjustments that pass between them.
Attention and Repair
If The Anatomy of Repair described the hand tightening the bolt, then The Feedback of Attention describes the perception that recognised the bolt slipping. Most repair begins long before any tool is used. You cannot correct what you have not noticed.
This applies to machines, relationships, and institutions alike. The earliest stage of repair is the recognition that something is out of alignment and still within reach of correction.
When I walk the shop floor at closing, I can usually see how well I listened. If I rushed, disorder gathers. If I paid attention, patterns remain visible.
Closing Reflection
Attention costs little, yet it reshapes whatever absorbs it. Neglect builds quietly. Awareness interrupts it. The smallest act of noticing changes the system that receives it.
Every bit of care appears somewhere. The day always responds, although it often reveals the response only when things finally settle.
Coherence does not survive through perfection. It survives through attention. The day answers back. It always answers back. You only need to remain long enough to recognise it.
Have you ever noticed something working only because someone kept paying attention to it?
Notes
Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart. (2000). “Attention, self regulation, and behaviour.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences.
Kia Nobre and Mark Stokes. (2019). Attention and Time.
Donella Meadows. (2008). Thinking in Systems. Chelsea Green Publishing.
Grace W. Lindsay. (2021). Models of the Mind. Oxford University Press.
Sherry Turkle. (2015). Reclaiming Conversation. Penguin Press.
Iain McGilchrist. (2021). The Matter with Things. Perspectiva Pre.
Header Photo by Nathan Dumlao on Unsplash